Categories

Categories are the rows of your budget. Every transaction belongs to one. Every month is the sum of its categories.

The three types

Savings is its own type so the dashboard can tell spending from moving money to where you want it later. The two are not the same.

Create or edit a category

1. Open Tools → Manage Categories in the desktop nav (on mobile: More → Budgeting → Manage Categories).

2. Tap Add Category, or tap an existing one to edit.

   The tiles at the top of this page are headed Default monthly plan · applies to new months. They total each category's default amount (Income, Expenses, Savings, and Unallocated or Over-assigned). This is your standing plan, not this month's figures: a month that already exists keeps its own plan, which you edit on the Dashboard.

3. Fill in:

   • Name and icon.
   • Type (income / expense / savings).
   • Amount — what the category is worth each month. Once the category exists this is owned by Amount History; the editor shows what's in effect and you change it by recording a dated change.
   • Recurrence (see below).

4. Save.

Put the categories in your own order

By default each Dashboard section — Income, Expenses, Savings — is listed alphabetically. If that isn't the order you think in, click Rearrange (above the category list). A drag handle appears on the left of every row — drag the rows into the order you want, then click Done. The handles disappear and your arrangement stays.

A few things worth knowing:

• Rearrange is a mode you enter and leave. The handles are only there while you're arranging, so your normal view stays clean. Clicking Rearrange also switches Sort by to Custom, since that's the sort that shows a hand-made order.
• You rearrange within a section. Income, Expenses, and Savings each keep their own order, and a category can't be dragged from one section into another — that's what its Type is for. Inside a section you can drag a category into a different group — see Group related categories below.
• The order is saved for the budget, not for your browser — so it follows you to your phone, and everyone sharing the budget sees the same arrangement.
• You can also do it without a mouse: Tab to a handle, press Space to pick the row up, use the arrow keys to move it, and press Space again to drop it.
• Renaming a category, changing its amount, or adding it to a single month all leave its position alone.
• A brand-new category joins the end of its section, ungrouped, until you move it.
• Switching Sort by back to Name doesn't erase anything; your custom order is waiting when you switch back.

Group related categories

Ten expense categories read as a list. The same ten under Food, Housing, Car and Fun read as a budget. A group is a heading you can file categories under, and it adds up what's underneath it.

A group holds no money of its own. The planned and actual figures on its header are the sum of its categories — the money still lives on the categories, exactly where it did before.

Make a group

1. On the Dashboard, find the section you want it in — Income, Expenses, or Savings.
2. Click the folder+ button in that section's header. On a phone the header has no room for a second button, so tap the + instead — it offers Add category and New group.
3. Name it — Food, Housing, The kids — and click Create group.

A group belongs to the section you made it in. An Expenses group can only hold expense categories, which is why the Income, Expenses and Savings sections each have their own set.

Put a category in it

Either way works:

• From the category. Tap the category's row on the Dashboard to open it, then the Manage tab, and pick the group from the Group dropdown. The dropdown appears once that section has at least one group — before that there's nothing to choose.
• By dragging. Click Rearrange, then drag the row under the group's heading. This is also how you move a category from one group to another, or drag it out to Ungrouped.

Living with groups

• Collapse one with the caret beside its name — useful once a section has more rows than fit on a screen. The header keeps showing its totals while it's collapsed.
• Rename, reorder or delete from the … menu on the group's header. Up and Down move the group within its section, so Housing can sit above Fun whatever their names are; the buttons grey out at the ends. Moving a group switches Sort by to Custom, because a hand-made order is the one thing only that sort can show. Deleting removes the heading only: every category inside it survives and becomes ungrouped. Nothing is deleted with it, and no transaction is touched.
• Anything you haven't filed sits under Ungrouped at the bottom of the section. If you've made no groups at all, there's no Ungrouped heading either — a budget without groups looks exactly as it always did.
• Groups survive your sort. Name, Amount and Custom all still work; the sorting happens inside each group rather than across the whole section.
• They belong to the budget, not to the browser you made them in — so they follow you to your phone, and everyone sharing the budget sees the same grouping.
• The Categories page shows them too, each with its own planned total. You make and change groups on the Dashboard; Categories reflects the same arrangement.
• Category dropdowns name the group. When you pick a category — recording a transaction, importing, moving money between plans — a grouped one reads Food › Groceries instead of just Groceries, so two similarly-named categories in different groups are told apart at a glance.

Recurrence

Recurrence tells the app how often the category appears.

• Monthly — every month. The default for most categories.
• Biweekly — every other week. Useful for paychecks on a biweekly schedule.
• Weekly — every week.
• Annual — once per year, on a specific month/day. The category appears on the dashboard only in months where it's active.
• One-off — appears only in the months you explicitly add it to.

For each recurring category you can set a start and end date — useful for, say, a 12-month gym membership.

Active months

Even on a monthly recurrence, a category can be made active only in certain months. Open the category and adjust the active months picker — handy for something like Holiday Gifts (active Nov + Dec only).

Bring a category back into a month

A seasonal or one-off category only shows up in the months it belongs to. When you need one outside its usual months — camp fees came due in August this year, the quarterly water bill landed early — add the category you already have rather than making a second one with the same name.

1. On the Dashboard, tap the + on the section you want it in (Income, Expenses, or Savings).
2. Choose Use an existing category and pick it from the list. Each one tells you why it isn't here on its own — out of season, quarterly, or one-off.
3. Enter an amount, or leave it blank to add it with nothing planned yet.

The row appears with an Added for {month} badge so you can tell it apart from the categories that live here every month. Nothing about the category itself changes — its recurrence, its active months, and its whole history stay exactly as they were, and it goes back to its normal schedule next month.

Why this matters: a duplicate category starts its history at zero. Spending Trends, the Lab, and every year-over-year comparison would then be reading half your numbers without saying so. Reusing the real category keeps all of it in one place.

To take it back out, open the category's settings (the gear on its Dashboard row; on a phone, tap the row and use the Manage tab) and choose Remove from {month}. If that month already has a planned amount or recorded spending, removal is switched off and Hide from {month} is offered instead — hiding keeps the numbers and the transactions; removing would take them off the dashboard.

Current amount vs. monthly planned amount

• Current amount is what the category is on today. The category editor shows it read-only, with the entry it came from underneath — and, if you have scheduled a change for a future date, a Next: line naming the new amount and when it starts.
• Monthly planned amount is the value actually used in a specific month. Edit it on the Dashboard.

You change the amount by recording an amount change, not by typing over a box. Amount History is the source of truth: it is what the budget reads for every month, and it is why you can look back and see what you were earning in March. There is no separate "current amount" to keep in sync — the number shown is simply the newest entry that has taken effect.

Months you haven't set by hand follow the history automatically. Past and current months aren't retroactively rewritten, and any month whose planned amount you edited directly stays locked at your value — see below for how to push a change into those locked months.

Amount schedules (raises, rate changes)

If a category's amount needs to change on a specific date — a salary bump on Aug 1, a rate increase — open the category, expand Amount History, and use Record Amount Change with the effective date. The new amount drives the budget from that month forward, and your earlier history is preserved.

A change dated in the future doesn't take effect yet, and the editor says so. Record a raise starting Aug 1 in June and the Current Amount keeps showing June's number, with Next: $X from Aug 1 beneath it. That's not a mistake — it's the point. The budget switches on its own when the date arrives.

A mid-month date starts the following month. A raise effective Mar 20 governs April onward, because a budget month can't be half at one rate. The exception is a category's very first entry, which always covers the month the category starts in.

The history reads as a table — date, note, amount, newest first — and the most recent entry is editable: hit the pencil beside it to correct the amount, the effective date, or the note. That is for fixing a mistake, not for recording a real change; a genuine new amount should be its own entry so the history stays an honest record. Older entries stay read-only, because changing one recomputes every month from its date onward.

Because BudgetLabs won't silently overwrite a month you set by hand, recording or correcting a change asks before touching locked months: if there are hand-set months on or after the effective date, you'll see "Apply this to N future months?". Choose Update them to recompute those months from the new amount — frequency-aware, so a bi-weekly income is multiplied by that month's paychecks — or Leave as-is to keep your manual values. Months you never touched always follow the latest amount automatically.

Default Split (recurring split rules)

If transactions assigned to this category should always split the same way — your phone bill is always 67% personal and 33% business, your AT&T charge is always partly your roommate's — set up a Default Split on the category instead of doing it manually each month.

1. Open the category and expand Default Split.
2. Pick a target category (e.g. Business Expenses) and the percent that should redirect there (e.g. 33).
3. Add as many target rows as you need. The header tells you what percent stays in this category vs. what's redirected.
4. Save.

When you add a transaction to this category — through the form, an import, or via Hank — a small "💡 This category has a default split — Apply" prompt appears. One tap fills the split section with your template values; you can still adjust before saving.

Templates are stored as percentages, not dollars, so they keep working when next month's bill is a different amount. A 33%-to-business rule still produces the right $103.30 split when the bill is $310 instead of $300.

Linked accounts

A category can name the account its transactions usually touch, so you stop picking the same one by hand every time. Both settings live on the Add/Edit Category form, and both are only a default — the transaction form still lets you change or clear the account before saving.

• Linked Debt Account — for a payment category. New transactions in it are pre-linked to that loan or card, so the payment lands on the right account in the Debt Tracker. It names one account, so if a single category covers several loans — a "Student Loans" category for four loans at one servicer — leave it on No linked debt account and split each payment as you record it. See Split a Loan Payment.
• Linked Asset Account — for an Income or Savings category. New transactions in it are pre-linked to that account, so the money raises its balance in Assets & Savings. It is called asset rather than savings because the list covers everything you hold — chequing, brokerage, a house, a vehicle — not just savings accounts.

The savings link is the one to reach for when a paycheck, a bonus, or a dividend goes straight into savings rather than into checking. Set it once on the income category and every future paycheck you log moves that account's balance without you selecting it again.

Two things worth knowing:

• It is offered on Income and Savings categories only. A linked transaction adds to the account's balance, which is right for money arriving and wrong for money spent — so expense categories don't get the option. If you switch a linked category to Expense, the link is cleared when you save.
• Deleting the account clears the link. The category stays; it simply goes back to having no default.

Exclude from Calculations

Some money is worth tracking but doesn't belong in your budget math. The common case is a pre-tax payroll contribution — an HSA payroll deduction, a 401(k) contribution, employer money. It comes out of your paycheck before you see it, so it was never take-home: it is neither income you can assign nor an expense you chose, and recording it as an ordinary category quietly inflates your Saved total and throws off whether your plan balances.

Turn on Exclude from Calculations (a toggle on the Add/Edit Category form) to keep the category fully visible while leaving it out of the math.

• It stays on screen. The category keeps its dashboard row, its planned amount, and every transaction, now marked with an Excluded badge.
• It leaves every total. It drops out of the Income − Expenses = Savings summary and its plan-gap ("over-assigned" / "unassigned") check, out of analytics and the Sankey flow, the Lab, the calendar totals, and the answers Hank gives.
• Its plan fields still edit. Default Amount and Frequency stay editable — they're simply ignored by the budget math.
• Its transactions still do their job. They still link to your savings and investment accounts, and HSA contributions still count toward the shared household HSA limit — see Assets & Savings.

This is the cleanest way to record the pre-tax contributions described in Assets & Savings as linked savings transactions without them distorting a budget they were never really part of. Give the category a Savings type (so a deposit reads as Savings Deposit), and excluding it keeps its balance moving on the linked account while the dashboard's totals stay honest.

Archive vs. delete

• Archive hides the category from the Dashboard but keeps every historical transaction intact. Recommended for almost every cleanup case.
• Delete is permanent and only available for categories that have never had a transaction.

When in doubt, archive.

What's next

• Auto-categorization rules — automatically tag imported transactions.
• The Lab — Insights — once you have a few months of categories logged, the Lab starts to show useful patterns.